This game cracks me up because I can't figure it out. I win more often than not on non-rated games no matter which deck I am using (although, warlock, druid, and paladin are rough for me). As soon as I go rated or arena, I get clobbered. I mean not even close, but beat down out of the gate. I think this means my deck building sucks, and unrated games are pretty much newbies that I have enough skill to beat.

The rated/arena games people do seem to play more tactically. For instance in non rated games most people seem to play their free mana card right off the bat to play whatever they can. In rated/arena people seem to save it for a good combo. I played one hunter that didn't do crap for 5-6 moves, and then he played a chain of cheap beast cards that gave him attack bonuses and extra cards. If he would have played them one or two at a time in the opening turns I would have taken each out one by one. I never recovered.

All that said, I love the game and thoroughly enjoy playing non rated games where I know I stand a chance.

That hunter rush is a pretty popular tactic. Did he unleash the hounds, perhaps? Taunting minions become extra valuable to protect against that, and you need to be careful not to go overboard with the minion count on your side.

Are you only using decks you build yourself? There are lots of good low cost decks posted online, and by building one of those you can practice gameplay without wondering if your deck is to blame.

Yeah he did the hounds IIRC. I run taunt heavy decks, but I didn't have anything at the time. It was the first time I had seen that tactic, but you do tend to get the noobs in non rated. Usually my first thought is that if my opponent is a mage it's going to be an easy win. That isn't always the case, but often when getting a mage they have a pretty basic deck.

A minor annoyance, almost no one ever finishes games anymore, they always concede. I don't get this, especially when they do it early in the game with half or more health. I have seen games completely flip off a well played card. I think it was a paladin I had down to like 5 health and I was still close to max (think I was playing a mage) and he got a series of high damage taunt minions down and I could never get the finishing blow in and he won (I ran out of cards as well).

I am building my own decks. I haven't done much reading on what I am doing wrong, I guess I should go look and get some better strategies for deck building. My general idea is 10 cards of spells/class specific cards and then 20 minions. I go for taunt and minions that have some other ability than just generic. Minion mix changes with each class obviously to try to play on strengths.

In arena I have a really hard time seeing the big picture when building a deck. I have something like 400gp, I need to play a couple of arena games.

Just had an odd game with my priest. A shaman wouldn't play hardly any cards, all he would do is play totems. He was saving for something, I guess, seemed really counter productive because I easily had control of the board, even if I didn't have anything powerful out. By turn 7 I have a full table of weak minions, played a card to give them all +3 attack and took him out. Think he played 2 cards in 7 turns.

I sometimes wish we could chat with people, would be interesting to see what people are thinking/doing. Of course almost no one would use it to have an intelligent conversation, so I am dreaming.

Try making a deck with few to no taunt minions present. I think it's common for new players to highly overrate the importance of taunts (I did), because it feels like taunt minions are the way you protect yourself from damage. But really, taunt minions are primarily there to protect other, weaker minions. If you have a more menacing minion lineup on the board than your opponent, your minions are already going to be your opponent's first concern even without any taunts present.

Hounds + Buzzard + creature buff is devastating. Not only does it clear the board of pretty much anything the enemy has at the time but it fills you hand with cards as well. A warning sign to watch for is if a hunter is letting you keep a bunch of weak minions on the board instead of killing them off. It’s one hound per enemy minion and he gets one card for each beats he summons.

I'm usually on in the mornings playing, so I never see anyone but Wonderpug, and we have never played. I am up for a game if we see each other. Haven't actually played any friends, so I don't know how it works exactly. Friends list is the button in the lower left. You can also see if people are in games, without actually being in the game, through Battlenet.

Lordnine: I don't remember all the cards he had out, but it was just like that. It was ridiculous. Have yet to see anyone else pull it off (or ever really try to), it seemed like the perfect storm.

Wonderpug: Less taunt? I get what you are saying, but that sounds so counter to what I do now. Will have to give it a try and see how it works. Thanks for the idea.

You need full usernames to add friends, like St0ckbroker#12345. Once added, in-game there's a little number in the lower left that shows if friends are online, and you can click on that to brin up a menu to send out match invites.

True, but on the hand I recently lost a game in part because of that Knife Juggler. The person kept playing taunt cards to protect it (and worse cards as the game went by) and I end up wasting all my attacks trying to get through the taunters to get him.

Point taken though, I need to go through my decks and re-evaluate them. Plus I have enough gold for 5 tournaments now, I need to go play them, even if I lose that's 5 packs of cards.

Your example also fits. You were hell-bent on killing the Knife Juggler, not on attacking your opponent directly.

Each time you play a taunting minion, think "what am I protecting?" If you can't think of a good answer, chances are you didn't really need that minion that match, and for the same cost you could have played a minion that benefited you much more in some other way.

So arena with mage, I took your advice Wonderpug, and took stronger minions than the equivalent taunt minions. Two and one so far. Lost to a hunter, badly, but I think that was due to a poor opening set of cards more than anything else. He was heavy in secret counters which made it hard to get going as well. Then beat a warrior and another hunter. The second hunter tried the whole rush of beast stacking attacks but I stopped it before he could get it going really. Feels good to finally win one in arena.

Read Ben's arena tips on the Hearthstone forums and watched half of his 2 hour long mage video. Gave me a MUCH better idea of what I should be doing with my mage. Just won my first ranked game. Still an Angry Chicken, but it's a start. :-)

Read Ben's arena tips on the Hearthstone forums and watched half of his 2 hour long mage video. Gave me a MUCH better idea of what I should be doing with my mage. Just won my first ranked game. Still an Angry Chicken, but it's a start. :-)

Up to 21 19. I wish there was some sort of reward system in place, I enjoy playing a deck I know the ins and outs of much more. I guess that is coming though, not that I am good enough to win anything. Getting better though, at least at the mage.

Just had an epic battle with a paladin. He had me down to 9 hp while he was at 30 (and he had healing cards available). I won, after using up both Flamestrikes, fireballs, and my nasty 10 damage fireball. A mage is extremely dangerous if you let them build up their cards. This guy had two 7/6 ogres out, Flamestrike, some clean up, and he never recovered. It was way too close of a battle, but damn it felt good winning it.

I've made it to 18 so far without spending any money and that is one of the reasons I am really liking this game. To put this into perspective, those of you that were my friends on Live likely noticed after my MW2 stint, I pretty much played only Fifa. My gaming time is normally only in Friday and Saturday from 10 till whenever, and last weekend I played 1 game of fifa then started playing this... Even my wife commented on it.

Anyway, the links I started the post with are links I've found to be helpful and entertaining.

The reddit link is useful in many ways, with the best example being a thread where a really good player (Trump) made it to Legendary with a Mage deck, without spending any money.

The iTunes link is for the podcast "the angry chicken" which I've listened to twice now and I found it to be entertaining first and the strategies discussed really have helped me to I prove.

Lastly, ihearthu is probably widely know by anyone playing this game, if it isn't it should be. They also have a podcast which I've subscribed to but not listened to.

I have such a love/hate thing going on with this game. Been playing arena, and losing more often than not. Really don't understand why some people get decks with 2 legendaries, while I haven't gotten even one in my last 4 runs. (Yes I am bitching for the sake of bitching.)

Yeah, I had a run of lackluster card selections in Arena which was deflating, but then just now I made it to 7-8 wins. Of course, the legendary I got in this deck (Deathwing) was pivotal to my success.

From my perspective I agree they should better normalize how many "better" cards are in an Arena draft, but then again I know players better than me can do consistently well no matter the draft options, so I'm not sure I'm good enough to say it's imbalanced.

While some legendaries are amazing I would say the majority are very situational and in most cases, you would be better off with more standard “good” and reliable cards.

I haven't decided if I agree or disagree with this, so I at least agree that it's partially accurate

I know I've had games decided because of Legendaries played against me. I also know I've one many due to playing them (maybe the one's you feel are amazing).

Well, let’s take for example Deathwing; which looks just amazing. Kill everything on the board and get a 12-12 creature? Yes please! Only, you also lose every card in your hand. If you play it too early you are asking to lose against a Priest, Rogue, Mage or even Shaman.

Priests have shadow word death and mind control. (As a dominantly priest player, I will always keep at least one of these in my hand until I have no choice but to play them.)Rogue has assassinate.Mage has polymorph.Shaman has frog.

Those are just the cards that will completely remove Deathwing from play; there are others that will greatly hinder it as well. Change attack to 1 etc.Most (but not all) lengendaries have similar drawbacks. They are very much all or nothing cards. They will either make you win very fast or lose horribly as a result of relying on them.

Ironically my arena priest I just did got 3 legendaries. 2 of them are expensive, one is is cheaper but not much help (gives a weapon benefit I don't need, but I took it because I needed cheaper cards). Fought another priest the first game, dominated without any of the legendaries. Second fight got another priest. Got my 2 good legendaries out, he took out one, but the other starts out at 8/8 and gains +1/1 at the end of each turn. He mind controlled it, did some damage, before I could mind control it back. By that point it was whoever who could get the finishing blow in. That was him.

Edit: Just beat a mage, easily thanks to that 8/8 plus legendary. I played out her sheep, and she appeared to not have gotten a Flamestrike. I think she played it wrong though, instead of trying to work the legendary down, she tried to race me to damage the hero first. No way she was going to win when I was doing 14+ damage a turn.

I don't want to play this deck. Too much pressure to win. I can't blame losing on shitty cards. :-)

I like the game so much, I bought 2 packs and got the free legendary card, Gelbin Somethingorother. I played a few games with it in my deck and it can be a game changer. Unfortunately, more often than not, with negative affect for my game. Two games I was dominating, on my way to winning, played Geblin, and got the random +6 healing bot. In both games it ended up healing my opponent's hero back to full health, and then keeping them there. One game went down to us being out of cards because the damn thing kept healing everything.

I agree about Gelbin. I've had it go my way and it's a cool card to play, but the random factor is too much for me and I can easily find a worthy substitute.

Really big patch today as Lee said, and indications are that Hearthstone should go live (non-beta) within a week. Not that this will change all that much, though, when the iPad version is finally released all bets are off.

Nat Pagle was nerfed a bit in this patch and he is one of my favorite cards. The end result of the nerf is really just one less turn with an opportunity for a draw. That doesn't seem that drastic, so I think I'm going to keep him (if you DE him you get 1,600 dust which is a crap load). I normally only play Nat when I have taunt up to protect him a bit, though I realize many play him on turn 2, and that is one of the main reason's for the nerf. The other Legendary that was adjusted I haven't actually unlocked yet (Tinkmaster), and the big change with him is that his effect now affects a random minion (so it can impact your own board).

Anyway, I'm still loving the hell out of this game and the depth of the strategies that can work are staggering. It has opened my mind to Card games like this, but after trying Magic and some others on the iPad i still find myself wishing I was playing this instead. Blizzard has another sure-fire winner on their hands, and the competitive competition side to this has already taken off. I never thought I'd have any interest in spectating a game (when I could be playing one instead). However, I've found myself watching some tournaments with the best Hearthstone players in it (Trump etc.) and really learned a lot and found it to be super entertaining.

If you have not tried out this game and like strategy games, or of course CCG's, you better damn well try this game... Fun can be had without spending a dime.